They had this at the U of MN when I was taking a few programming courses in 1997 or so. I was taking a "structures of programming" class, and a friend of mine and I decided to "help each other out". The class was based on that god forsaken language, scheme. Well, we got busted, but they didn't do anything to us, thank god. We could have been kicked out of school. Wasn't the brightest thing I ever did. Anyway, after that class I switched to EE and that's what I'm doing today.
I'm sure various schools have had this for a very long time. A script using a lot of diff commands wouldn't be very hard to develop.
Technology doesn't change the world, people change the world. Or insert any similar one-liner of your choice.
Things have changed for the better in some ways. Media consolidation has been very rapid the past 6 years or so. Yet anyone with interenet access has access to independant media outlets that ask questions and dig deeper than the mainstream media, who are spoon fed by the pentagon and are quite conciously ok with that.
The problem is that people have to know about these sites and want to go to them. If the entire population is brainwashed to follow one point of view, it won't matter if the plain truth is right in front of them. That is a problem technology can't solve.
A generation ago, most Americans got their news once or twice a day -? from daily papers and evening network newscasts -? no matter what was going on. These were delayed, filtered media. Information could be transmitted, digested and organized before it was presented to the public. No matter how serious the story, you couldn't wallow in it for too long -- evening newscasts only lasted a half hour and there was only so much space in the paper. And reporters and editors had time to consider and check some of the information they passed along.
News of old may have been more carefully checked out, with less content that really says nothing, but the level of propeganda probably wasn't much different. As in it's very, very pro-USA. There is never any critical analysis of our government and what it's doing, which is unfortuante, because it's necessary to keep a democracy flourishing. Jingoistic chest-beating (as of late) does not make up for this.
Sensationalism is newer, or at least more sophisticated in how it grabs the viewer. But an American public whose biggest daily worry is how to pack all those groceries in the SUV is ripe for irrational thought.
If anything technology has led to a homogenization of media, even though there is far more content. Lets face it, all the news stations are saying pretty much the same thing. This started when television became the primary means of information dispersal. We don't have the Labor press handing out newspapers to factory workers like we did in the early 20th century. Media with different points of view and ideas like the labor press had don't exist except for a few fairly marginalized magazines like The Nation.
Also, our press's lack of attention to foreign affairs is not due to government control, but due to the sad state of education and the culture of isolationism that periodically raises its head. The sad state of education may be caused by the government, but through incompetence rather than conspiracy.
I don't beleive that. However, it's not a conspiracy either. I never said it was. It's part of our culture. The government doesn't control the press. If you're in the journalism business, you find out quickly that you will not be promoted and possibly dismissed if you openly question our economic institutions or government. It's in the best interests of those who run the media, who the culture originates with.
Please go to China or Russia to see what total and partial, respectively, control of the press and propaganda really looks like.
Oh you're basically right. I wouldn't want to live in these countries, I'm certainly glad I'm here. That doesn't mean we don't have propeganda. It's just more sophisticated. We have the freedom to say just about anything, but when you get 99% of the population to behave the same way (ie don't be politically active, just sit there and watch TV), the outcome isn't all that different. That 1% of the population isn't enough to make a difference, unless they get public sympathy, which rarely happens.
Please: slashdot "anarchists" and those who believe you're repressed and the subject of government plots--do some traveling to truly unfree places and see the difference. Just because the rest of us fail to jump to your cause may mean that we just don't buy what you're selling, not that your fantasies of repression have anything to do with reality.
Given the circumstances I can see your anger, but where did this come from? Where did I say I'm an anarchist and that I'm angry that people don't beleive me? Or that anyone is running a conspiracy?
I think the only reason they went for this is due to the incredibly high profile nature of this situation.
The US will attack anyone it pleases, breaking international law if it has to, which it has done repeatedly. Most of our attacks dating back to the early 80's (Latin America) and probably earlier are usually denounced in the international press. There are only three things that really deter our government from attacks:
1) US public opinion
2) international public opinion
3) threat of counterattack (ie we don't attack Russia because they killed x number of people over issue x, because they can nuke us. Countries like the former Yugoslovia or Somalia do not present this problem).
And really #1 and #2 can be kept to a minimum when no one knows what is going on to begin with when the media doesn't report it.
Since #1 is the most important you see information controls and propeganda in the US far more than the rest of the "civilized world". As such you can go to Canada and at least get a more accurate picture of things going on in the world, instead of another evening of Larry King talking to Chandra Levy's parents and a 1 paragraph mention of the thousands of people killed by security forces in country x in the back of the New York Times.
If at a minimum the investigation shows the attackers to be Arab, whether they are connected to Bin Laden or even if they are American citizens, Afghanistan will be crushed. This is looking more likely by the hour.
The general public doesn't understand technology, thinks the third world causes all of their own problems, and thinks that people who oppose patents in any way are communists. That's tough to overcome.
How do you go about convincing the public that anything you advocate is good?
As soon as I read this I knew there was only one place in the world where this would be done, the Minnesota state fair. Every year there is a "beauty contest" and the winner along with the runners up get a butter sculpture in the likeness of their head (the winner represents the Minnesota dairy industry). So now there are a number of groups around who do things like this. I didn't expect people to try and make money off of it, though.
So good riddance to the old school. Let them keep propagating their useless, mindless, repetitive crap for the masses, and lets not waste bandwidth on it.
Lets just hope that the power of the old school hasn't become too big. New technologies that disrupted things in the past usually made it out alive in some form. Perhaps today this might be changing, with a powerful corporate lobby, an apathetic public, and a media who doesn't report on what they should be reporting on.
I'd love to see the abilities this technology gives us help us break out of the homogenized consumer culture we're in. Give it 15 years or so and we'll find out.
I've been thinking about this quite a bit since I read the piece yesterday on the Hauge, and to me, the end result of this seems to be another transfer of power to megacorp, and not for the exact same reasons stated in yesterday's article by RMS.
The internet creates a huge mess for governments, the extent of which is only now being uncovered. They've never had to deal with something so benign and abstract that can undermine their laws, culture, or even power structure for that matter. Think of how many resources policing the internet would take as far as monitors and lawers to keep all sites in the world "inline" with every country. Basically it can't be done. But they will try. And fail, even if it takes many, many years to reach that point.
Back to the US. Keep in mind the current case is over nazi memorabilia auctions. Not exactly the biggest market out there. If issues like this start to affect much larger markets, megacorp will stand up and say NO WAY. Coupled with the US government, they won't allow some small third world country to dictate internet policy. The US breaks any treaty it no longer feels is in it's best interest, and this won't change. But megacorps will still be able to use the same treaty in ways that RMS described yesterday.
If you don't have the money to buy government support, however, (as in you're a small site that deals in, say, anti-chinese government commentary)you might be out of luck.
So here is the long term net result, IMO:
government power: weakened
free speech: weakened
commerce/corporate power: strengthened
If it wasn't this, it would just be something else. If you want to stop violence or whatever other problems any activity creates, you either eliminate the need for people to express themselves that way, or your run a police state. Take your pick. Sometimes both options are pretty similar.
I didn't get the impression that time.com was against the online game, but still.
A: Yeah. It's good competition. It will force us to be innovative. It will force us to justify the prices and value that we deliver. And that's only healthy. The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. If the government wants to put something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.
It doesn't look that way. He's referring to how the GPL works, so in Microsoft's view he's correct. If you think open source is a good thing, however, his argument doesn't really hold.
I don't know where this "government funded research" thing comes from...maybe unix back in the 60's? That's an incredibly arrogant statement coming from an executive at a big corporation anyway. Look at how much nearly free research companies get by giving a few bucks (relatively speaking) to Universities. The public doesn't see any of the return on that money....is that fair?
You know, normally I don't get worked up by whatever crap Microsoft exec's are currently spewing out, but this really bugs me from a philosophical standpoint. For me they are really starting to represent everything that can go wrong with capitalism in the information age.
Maybe they really ARE that terrified of linux, even on the desktop where it isn't currently much of a threat. No one to sue, buy, or threaten. Thats tough for a modern day corporation to deal with.
Calm down. Most Americans are well aware that all European countries are very different. For a short post a quick generalization is all I have time for. But keep these things in mind:
50 countries. I don't have time to study them all.
US media. International coverage is pretty minimal. I have to be very pro-active to get anything of substance about what is going on over there.
Free markets are good for economies, and in many cases, for the people who work in them. They can promote creativity, innovation, prosperity, choice and individualism, more than other political and economic systems. But there has to be a balance between the prosperity of the market and the morality of the market -- a balance already tilting off center in almost the entire range of tech industries, and on the Net and Web.
I don't think there is conclusive evidence that free markets make the world better. Certainly by themselves they don't. They're just an abstract. In the current world order, they just open up poorer nations to extreme exploitation. This is what the protesters in Seattle were against.
I don't think Katz really understands that the problems with corporations are really problems with capitalism. It's cold, emotionless, unhuman nature. In thoery it should work great, just like Marxist Communism. When implemented, however, the selfishness, greed, and other human shortcomings really end up harming society.
With capitalism we take away our own destiny and put it in the hands of an abstract notion of economic growth. I don't have a solution, of course, just some ideas. There seems to be a large number of people starting to agree with me. Not on this level for most, but more like the things they don't like about their daily life. Maybe just the fact that their local ballpark was renamed MegaCorp field.
Katz also overrates the importance of the internet. It really is just a tool. MegaCorp can supress the majority of the population the way it does in every other media form: if the majority of the population doesn't know where to find "the truth", nothing will change. Sure the internet is basically impossible to censor, which gives me hope, but look at all the copyright control ideas being thrown around. It brings us closer to centralized control, which is what the government and your local MegaCorp would love.
It seems obvious to me that he's ignoring the reason people worry about privacy in this country. I won't expand on it since other people have.
This guy is a typical example of how money is considered more important than people in this society. Since information is basically a form of currency, opinions like this are bound to be the most common. Or, at least, those that are most often heard.
In Europe, they have a more balanced view of privacy rights. Opt-in instead of opt-out, your data is your property, etc. They don't put as much of a priority on economic growth and money as we do, and that's not a coincidence.
When I was about 7 years old a few friends and myself checked out some xxx porno mags owned by my friends dad. I kinda understood sex at the time, and basically my resonce was "hmm, ok, that was interesting." It didn't really throw me off or anything.
A agree with the AC below who says its an education issue. I don't really agree with the so called studies you mention. There are plenty of other things in society that clearly cause sexual dysfunction: neglect, sexual abuse, etc. These problems are FAR more important to deal with than porn.
But it's a lot easier to censor porn with one fell swoop than to look deeply at societies problems.
I'm sure its also that puritan streak that Americans have as well. Enjoying your body brings shame, etc. My parents also think that if you watch porn you'll think thats the normal way to have sex (fucking) as opposed to "making love" to the person you're with. Again, I don't agree with this. I just don't see porn being the cause of any problems.
You can make PLENTY of dough off of stupid people, if you're willing to stoop low enough. You can also make money off of intelligent businesses who will do anything to protect their business model. That's really all there is to it.
Ah yes, that is their goal, but you forget what Bruce Schneier has always been saying about these situations: Once someone writes some sort of hack program, that runs with a few mouse clicks, the average dumb user is back in business.
It's the same thing with mp3s: the average person doesn't know how to rip / encode a cd that isn't even copyright protected, but give them a program like napster, and they can can download mp3s all day.
On the first you are more optimistic than reality.
No three signatures were needed as there were no copiers for public use.
I read this in a book by Manuel Castells, perhaps I took it out of context or it was just wrong.
On the second you are more pessimistic than reality. USSR and some of its successors have a long tradition of scientific and technical knowledge. Don't forget this.
I'm well aware of their strong tradition in science, often better than the US in many areas. But that is only one step, you need engineers and businessmen to bring products to market based on what is learned in the arena of science. The USSR also had minimal links between universities and industry, so tech transfer was difficult. Here in the US that problem doesn't exist, although you might say the opposite is true (corporate interests being put first in the lab).
Yes, they are different than our "traditional Science", yes they are stucked in their regimes and traditions, yes they are now on the back train.
I still think you need a generally open society in order for new ideas to flourish and go somewhere.
I think you're right about the cycle you described. Basically the same thing that happened here in the US, during the late 19th and early 20th century.
The cost of progress was high enough here, with lives lost, opression, and all the rest, but in China, the price will be staggering. I can't even imagine the number of people that will die if opposition to their government becomes widespread at some point in time. In the US the opposition to rights of the common man was more corporate/capitalist in nature, not government based. That's an oversimplified comment, but I think it's generally true. The businesses didn't have the weapons, or a majority of them, anyway. The US government likes to keep the rabble in line, for sure, but not to the point of mass murdering the citizens, as China really wouldn't have a problem with (how the US treats citizens of other nations is a different matter, however).
In China, the government is the business, and they have the weapons. Lots of powerful, mass destruction weaponry. This clash you desribe between the government trying to open society while trying to keep it closed could lead to a wild, terrifying ride this century. If humanity shows that it is worthy of survival anytime soon, I think this proof will come out of China. I don't expect too much from our citizens living easy lives here in the first world.
I've been wondering for some time now how China plans to expand it's economy in the information age with such serious controls on information flow.
The Chinese government seems to be doing the same thing the Soviet Union did, leading up to it's demise (at least from an economic standpoint). With such controls on information (you needed three signatures in the old USSR to use a copier if I remember correctly), I'm not sure it's possible to compete in the global marketplace, at least beyond basic manufacturing. At least China didn't make the mistake of pumping all it's resources into military and heavy industries like the USSR. China does have some silicon fabs, so they do have a bit of a high tech presence.
The other tactic of stealing technology didn't really work for the USSR either. A copy is never as good as the original, and without a scientific knowledge base you'll never be able to improve on the technology you stole. This might not seem to fit in with this article, but perhaps China wouldn't have to be in the reverse engineering business quite as much as it is if they heavily funded academic institutions and allowed them to operate freely like they do in the US. Yes, I know the notion of Universities operating freely is a relative term in the US.
Does anyone have an idea how they can go beyond umbrella manufacturing with their current social setup?
My "check card" is actually a visa card. It just takes cashola out of my checking account. Works in any situation where you'd otherwise use a credit card (because as far as the business is concerned, it is a credit card).
Great way to get rid of the credit card need...it's nice to have the credit card around for emergencies, though.
Well, even if RAMBUS loses this case altogether, there is still the competition between DDR and RDRAM. Who will win this battle is completely unknown.
Do consumers want or need a P4 with RDRAM? Will AMD continue to take market share, thereby boosting DDR sales? Will RDRAM prices come down? Will DDR chipsets finally ship in volume? And which technology really works better?
This battle is far from settled even when excluding the court case. Intel IS going to ship DDR product with the P4, but at a later date, conceiveably after RDRAM is reaching mass acceptance. They are keeping the door open, though. RAMBUS isn't going away soon, if ever.
Wrong. She did not know what she was getting into. She was BORN into it. Her parents MADE her be a member. Her dad was the one who joined volutarily.
As for education, the fact that a few people actually go to college doesn't mean they don't discourage it. There were a few people she knew who went to college, but that was out of the very large number of people she knew. I've heard out east that it is more accepted than it is here in the midwest. In her congregation it was definately frowed upon.
As Squid said, it is indeed 144,000. I'm not sure of exactly what math and from what numbers they use, although Squid's reason rings a bell. You can easily get any number you want by manipulating any other number, so it's pretty ridiculous.
They also try to predict when the world will end with similar methods. It was supposed to end early last century, and when it didn't happen, they revised is for around 20 years later. Since it didn't happen then and they lost a LOT of their members because of it, they have now switched their official word for the end date to "soon". Her sister and dad literally don't save money because of this. It's surreal, to say the least.
Slashdot Mirror
At least someone is going to have a good valentines day!
They had this at the U of MN when I was taking a few programming courses in 1997 or so. I was taking a "structures of programming" class, and a friend of mine and I decided to "help each other out". The class was based on that god forsaken language, scheme. Well, we got busted, but they didn't do anything to us, thank god. We could have been kicked out of school. Wasn't the brightest thing I ever did. Anyway, after that class I switched to EE and that's what I'm doing today.
I'm sure various schools have had this for a very long time. A script using a lot of diff commands wouldn't be very hard to develop.
Technology doesn't change the world, people change the world. Or insert any similar one-liner of your choice.
Things have changed for the better in some ways. Media consolidation has been very rapid the past 6 years or so. Yet anyone with interenet access has access to independant media outlets that ask questions and dig deeper than the mainstream media, who are spoon fed by the pentagon and are quite conciously ok with that.
The problem is that people have to know about these sites and want to go to them. If the entire population is brainwashed to follow one point of view, it won't matter if the plain truth is right in front of them. That is a problem technology can't solve.
A generation ago, most Americans got their news once or twice a day -? from daily papers and evening network newscasts -? no matter what was going on. These were delayed, filtered media. Information could be transmitted, digested and organized before it was presented to the public. No matter how serious the story, you couldn't wallow in it for too long -- evening newscasts only lasted a half hour and there was only so much space in the paper. And reporters and editors had time to consider and check some of the information they passed along.
News of old may have been more carefully checked out, with less content that really says nothing, but the level of propeganda probably wasn't much different. As in it's very, very pro-USA. There is never any critical analysis of our government and what it's doing, which is unfortuante, because it's necessary to keep a democracy flourishing. Jingoistic chest-beating (as of late) does not make up for this.
Sensationalism is newer, or at least more sophisticated in how it grabs the viewer. But an American public whose biggest daily worry is how to pack all those groceries in the SUV is ripe for irrational thought.
If anything technology has led to a homogenization of media, even though there is far more content. Lets face it, all the news stations are saying pretty much the same thing. This started when television became the primary means of information dispersal. We don't have the Labor press handing out newspapers to factory workers like we did in the early 20th century. Media with different points of view and ideas like the labor press had don't exist except for a few fairly marginalized magazines like The Nation.
You've misinterpreted my comments.
Also, our press's lack of attention to foreign affairs is not due to government control, but due to the sad state of education and the culture of isolationism that periodically raises its head. The sad state of education may be caused by the government, but through incompetence rather than conspiracy.
I don't beleive that. However, it's not a conspiracy either. I never said it was. It's part of our culture. The government doesn't control the press. If you're in the journalism business, you find out quickly that you will not be promoted and possibly dismissed if you openly question our economic institutions or government. It's in the best interests of those who run the media, who the culture originates with.
Please go to China or Russia to see what total and partial, respectively, control of the press and propaganda really looks like.
Oh you're basically right. I wouldn't want to live in these countries, I'm certainly glad I'm here. That doesn't mean we don't have propeganda. It's just more sophisticated. We have the freedom to say just about anything, but when you get 99% of the population to behave the same way (ie don't be politically active, just sit there and watch TV), the outcome isn't all that different. That 1% of the population isn't enough to make a difference, unless they get public sympathy, which rarely happens.
Please: slashdot "anarchists" and those who believe you're repressed and the subject of government plots--do some traveling to truly unfree places and see the difference. Just because the rest of us fail to jump to your cause may mean that we just don't buy what you're selling, not that your fantasies of repression have anything to do with reality.
Given the circumstances I can see your anger, but where did this come from? Where did I say I'm an anarchist and that I'm angry that people don't beleive me? Or that anyone is running a conspiracy?
I think the only reason they went for this is due to the incredibly high profile nature of this situation.
The US will attack anyone it pleases, breaking international law if it has to, which it has done repeatedly. Most of our attacks dating back to the early 80's (Latin America) and probably earlier are usually denounced in the international press. There are only three things that really deter our government from attacks:
1) US public opinion
2) international public opinion
3) threat of counterattack (ie we don't attack Russia because they killed x number of people over issue x, because they can nuke us. Countries like the former Yugoslovia or Somalia do not present this problem).
And really #1 and #2 can be kept to a minimum when no one knows what is going on to begin with when the media doesn't report it.
Since #1 is the most important you see information controls and propeganda in the US far more than the rest of the "civilized world". As such you can go to Canada and at least get a more accurate picture of things going on in the world, instead of another evening of Larry King talking to Chandra Levy's parents and a 1 paragraph mention of the thousands of people killed by security forces in country x in the back of the New York Times.
If at a minimum the investigation shows the attackers to be Arab, whether they are connected to Bin Laden or even if they are American citizens, Afghanistan will be crushed. This is looking more likely by the hour.
The general public doesn't understand technology, thinks the third world causes all of their own problems, and thinks that people who oppose patents in any way are communists. That's tough to overcome.
How do you go about convincing the public that anything you advocate is good?
As soon as I read this I knew there was only one place in the world where this would be done, the Minnesota state fair. Every year there is a "beauty contest" and the winner along with the runners up get a butter sculpture in the likeness of their head (the winner represents the Minnesota dairy industry). So now there are a number of groups around who do things like this. I didn't expect people to try and make money off of it, though.
So good riddance to the old school. Let them keep propagating their useless, mindless, repetitive crap for the masses, and lets not waste bandwidth on it.
Lets just hope that the power of the old school hasn't become too big. New technologies that disrupted things in the past usually made it out alive in some form. Perhaps today this might be changing, with a powerful corporate lobby, an apathetic public, and a media who doesn't report on what they should be reporting on.
I'd love to see the abilities this technology gives us help us break out of the homogenized consumer culture we're in. Give it 15 years or so and we'll find out.
I've been thinking about this quite a bit since I read the piece yesterday on the Hauge, and to me, the end result of this seems to be another transfer of power to megacorp, and not for the exact same reasons stated in yesterday's article by RMS.
The internet creates a huge mess for governments, the extent of which is only now being uncovered. They've never had to deal with something so benign and abstract that can undermine their laws, culture, or even power structure for that matter. Think of how many resources policing the internet would take as far as monitors and lawers to keep all sites in the world "inline" with every country. Basically it can't be done. But they will try. And fail, even if it takes many, many years to reach that point.
Back to the US. Keep in mind the current case is over nazi memorabilia auctions. Not exactly the biggest market out there. If issues like this start to affect much larger markets, megacorp will stand up and say NO WAY. Coupled with the US government, they won't allow some small third world country to dictate internet policy. The US breaks any treaty it no longer feels is in it's best interest, and this won't change. But megacorps will still be able to use the same treaty in ways that RMS described yesterday.
If you don't have the money to buy government support, however, (as in you're a small site that deals in, say, anti-chinese government commentary)you might be out of luck.
So here is the long term net result, IMO:
government power: weakened
free speech: weakened
commerce/corporate power: strengthened
If it wasn't this, it would just be something else. If you want to stop violence or whatever other problems any activity creates, you either eliminate the need for people to express themselves that way, or your run a police state. Take your pick. Sometimes both options are pretty similar.
I didn't get the impression that time.com was against the online game, but still.
A: Yeah. It's good competition. It will force us to be innovative. It will force us to justify the prices and value that we deliver. And that's only healthy. The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. If the government wants to put something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.
It doesn't look that way. He's referring to how the GPL works, so in Microsoft's view he's correct. If you think open source is a good thing, however, his argument doesn't really hold.
I don't know where this "government funded research" thing comes from...maybe unix back in the 60's? That's an incredibly arrogant statement coming from an executive at a big corporation anyway. Look at how much nearly free research companies get by giving a few bucks (relatively speaking) to Universities. The public doesn't see any of the return on that money....is that fair?
You know, normally I don't get worked up by whatever crap Microsoft exec's are currently spewing out, but this really bugs me from a philosophical standpoint. For me they are really starting to represent everything that can go wrong with capitalism in the information age.
Maybe they really ARE that terrified of linux, even on the desktop where it isn't currently much of a threat. No one to sue, buy, or threaten. Thats tough for a modern day corporation to deal with.
Calm down. Most Americans are well aware that all European countries are very different. For a short post a quick generalization is all I have time for. But keep these things in mind:
50 countries. I don't have time to study them all.
US media. International coverage is pretty minimal. I have to be very pro-active to get anything of substance about what is going on over there.
I'm a bit suprised that Sweden is that bad.
Free markets are good for economies, and in many cases, for the people who work in them. They can promote creativity, innovation, prosperity, choice and individualism, more than other political and economic systems. But there has to be a balance between the prosperity of the market and the morality of the market -- a balance already tilting off center in almost the entire range of tech industries, and on the Net and Web.
I don't think there is conclusive evidence that free markets make the world better. Certainly by themselves they don't. They're just an abstract. In the current world order, they just open up poorer nations to extreme exploitation. This is what the protesters in Seattle were against.
I don't think Katz really understands that the problems with corporations are really problems with capitalism. It's cold, emotionless, unhuman nature. In thoery it should work great, just like Marxist Communism. When implemented, however, the selfishness, greed, and other human shortcomings really end up harming society.
With capitalism we take away our own destiny and put it in the hands of an abstract notion of economic growth. I don't have a solution, of course, just some ideas. There seems to be a large number of people starting to agree with me. Not on this level for most, but more like the things they don't like about their daily life. Maybe just the fact that their local ballpark was renamed MegaCorp field.
Katz also overrates the importance of the internet. It really is just a tool. MegaCorp can supress the majority of the population the way it does in every other media form: if the majority of the population doesn't know where to find "the truth", nothing will change. Sure the internet is basically impossible to censor, which gives me hope, but look at all the copyright control ideas being thrown around. It brings us closer to centralized control, which is what the government and your local MegaCorp would love.
It seems obvious to me that he's ignoring the reason people worry about privacy in this country. I won't expand on it since other people have.
This guy is a typical example of how money is considered more important than people in this society. Since information is basically a form of currency, opinions like this are bound to be the most common. Or, at least, those that are most often heard.
In Europe, they have a more balanced view of privacy rights. Opt-in instead of opt-out, your data is your property, etc. They don't put as much of a priority on economic growth and money as we do, and that's not a coincidence.
When I was about 7 years old a few friends and myself checked out some xxx porno mags owned by my friends dad. I kinda understood sex at the time, and basically my resonce was "hmm, ok, that was interesting." It didn't really throw me off or anything.
A agree with the AC below who says its an education issue. I don't really agree with the so called studies you mention. There are plenty of other things in society that clearly cause sexual dysfunction: neglect, sexual abuse, etc. These problems are FAR more important to deal with than porn.
But it's a lot easier to censor porn with one fell swoop than to look deeply at societies problems.
I'm sure its also that puritan streak that Americans have as well. Enjoying your body brings shame, etc. My parents also think that if you watch porn you'll think thats the normal way to have sex (fucking) as opposed to "making love" to the person you're with. Again, I don't agree with this. I just don't see porn being the cause of any problems.
You can make PLENTY of dough off of stupid people, if you're willing to stoop low enough. You can also make money off of intelligent businesses who will do anything to protect their business model. That's really all there is to it.
Ah yes, that is their goal, but you forget what Bruce Schneier has always been saying about these situations: Once someone writes some sort of hack program, that runs with a few mouse clicks, the average dumb user is back in business.
It's the same thing with mp3s: the average person doesn't know how to rip / encode a cd that isn't even copyright protected, but give them a program like napster, and they can can download mp3s all day.
On the first you are more optimistic than reality.
No three signatures were needed as there were no copiers for public use.
I read this in a book by Manuel Castells, perhaps I took it out of context or it was just wrong.
On the second you are more pessimistic than reality. USSR and some of its successors have a long tradition of scientific and technical knowledge. Don't forget this.
I'm well aware of their strong tradition in science, often better than the US in many areas. But that is only one step, you need engineers and businessmen to bring products to market based on what is learned in the arena of science. The USSR also had minimal links between universities and industry, so tech transfer was difficult. Here in the US that problem doesn't exist, although you might say the opposite is true (corporate interests being put first in the lab).
Yes, they are different than our "traditional Science", yes they are stucked in their regimes and traditions, yes they are now on the back train.
I still think you need a generally open society in order for new ideas to flourish and go somewhere.
I think you're right about the cycle you described. Basically the same thing that happened here in the US, during the late 19th and early 20th century.
The cost of progress was high enough here, with lives lost, opression, and all the rest, but in China, the price will be staggering. I can't even imagine the number of people that will die if opposition to their government becomes widespread at some point in time. In the US the opposition to rights of the common man was more corporate/capitalist in nature, not government based. That's an oversimplified comment, but I think it's generally true. The businesses didn't have the weapons, or a majority of them, anyway. The US government likes to keep the rabble in line, for sure, but not to the point of mass murdering the citizens, as China really wouldn't have a problem with (how the US treats citizens of other nations is a different matter, however).
In China, the government is the business, and they have the weapons. Lots of powerful, mass destruction weaponry. This clash you desribe between the government trying to open society while trying to keep it closed could lead to a wild, terrifying ride this century. If humanity shows that it is worthy of survival anytime soon, I think this proof will come out of China. I don't expect too much from our citizens living easy lives here in the first world.
I've been wondering for some time now how China plans to expand it's economy in the information age with such serious controls on information flow.
The Chinese government seems to be doing the same thing the Soviet Union did, leading up to it's demise (at least from an economic standpoint). With such controls on information (you needed three signatures in the old USSR to use a copier if I remember correctly), I'm not sure it's possible to compete in the global marketplace, at least beyond basic manufacturing. At least China didn't make the mistake of pumping all it's resources into military and heavy industries like the USSR. China does have some silicon fabs, so they do have a bit of a high tech presence.
The other tactic of stealing technology didn't really work for the USSR either. A copy is never as good as the original, and without a scientific knowledge base you'll never be able to improve on the technology you stole. This might not seem to fit in with this article, but perhaps China wouldn't have to be in the reverse engineering business quite as much as it is if they heavily funded academic institutions and allowed them to operate freely like they do in the US. Yes, I know the notion of Universities operating freely is a relative term in the US.
Does anyone have an idea how they can go beyond umbrella manufacturing with their current social setup?
My "check card" is actually a visa card. It just takes cashola out of my checking account. Works in any situation where you'd otherwise use a credit card (because as far as the business is concerned, it is a credit card).
Great way to get rid of the credit card need...it's nice to have the credit card around for emergencies, though.
Well, even if RAMBUS loses this case altogether, there is still the competition between DDR and RDRAM. Who will win this battle is completely unknown.
Do consumers want or need a P4 with RDRAM? Will AMD continue to take market share, thereby boosting DDR sales? Will RDRAM prices come down? Will DDR chipsets finally ship in volume? And which technology really works better?
This battle is far from settled even when excluding the court case. Intel IS going to ship DDR product with the P4, but at a later date, conceiveably after RDRAM is reaching mass acceptance. They are keeping the door open, though. RAMBUS isn't going away soon, if ever.
Wrong. She did not know what she was getting into. She was BORN into it. Her parents MADE her be a member. Her dad was the one who joined volutarily.
As for education, the fact that a few people actually go to college doesn't mean they don't discourage it. There were a few people she knew who went to college, but that was out of the very large number of people she knew. I've heard out east that it is more accepted than it is here in the midwest. In her congregation it was definately frowed upon.
As Squid said, it is indeed 144,000. I'm not sure of exactly what math and from what numbers they use, although Squid's reason rings a bell. You can easily get any number you want by manipulating any other number, so it's pretty ridiculous.
They also try to predict when the world will end with similar methods. It was supposed to end early last century, and when it didn't happen, they revised is for around 20 years later. Since it didn't happen then and they lost a LOT of their members because of it, they have now switched their official word for the end date to "soon". Her sister and dad literally don't save money because of this. It's surreal, to say the least.